novelraw Chapter 129 : The Song Beneath the Air
Chapter 129 : The Song Beneath the Air
(Rooga’s POV)
The sound of wood against knife had a rhythm all its own.
Scrape, flick, peel — the curl of a shaving fell onto my lap.
The scent of cedar hung in the morning air, mixing with the faint sweetness of the crops that bordered the village road.
I liked this place.
The little shack sat just behind the weaver’s house, half hidden by vines, a spot no one bothered with except the children.
It was quiet enough for my thoughts and close enough to hear the laughter of the villagers.
Today, I was working on another small carving — a bird, its wings half-spread.
Reyja had asked for it days ago, saying she wanted something that could “fly even if it’s made of wood.”
“Fly, huh…” I muttered, shaping the curve of a feather. “We’ll see.”
The blade slipped through the grain smoothly.
The wind was calm.
Everything was normal.
Until it wasn’t.
It started as a faint tremor in the air.
Not sound. Not wind. Something else.
The mana around me… shifted.
I froze mid-cut, knife hovering above the carving.
A wave of warmth brushed against my chest — not the heavy, divine pressure of Maori or the sharp pulse of my mother’s magic.
This was soft. Gentle. Almost like a hand reaching through the air to touch mine.
And then, for a heartbeat, I heard it.
A whisper.
Not words, but a song.
Just one note — clear and sad and beautiful.
The knife slipped slightly, nicking the tip of the wooden bird’s wing.
“What was that?” I murmured.
The mana faded as quickly as it came, leaving the air still again.
But my heart wouldn’t calm down.
That resonance — it wasn’t from this land.
It wasn’t human, or even divine in the way Maori was.
It was something older, deeper.
And yet… somehow, it felt familiar.
Like a memory from before I was born.
I looked toward the village road.
There were more voices than usual — people murmuring, excited, distant.
Something about “elves” and “holy visitors.”
I sighed, setting down the carving knife. “Great. Another noble visit. Or maybe some priest trying to meet Father again.”
But that warmth… that mana signature.
It wasn’t random. It had found me.
I could still feel it lingering faintly, like the echo of a heartbeat matching my own.
When the wind shifted again, it came from the direction of Maori’s grove.
And that decided it.
The road between the village and the grove was familiar — dirt packed from years of walking, the edges lined with herbs Maori had once made bloom from my magic.
Children always said it smelled like safety.
To me, it smelled like home.
The closer I got, the more the world quieted.
The birds stopped singing.
The air grew heavier, saturated with mana.
Maori was awake.
“Guess I’ll ask you about that one,” I muttered under my breath.
Because if anyone could tell me what that strange mana was — and why it made my heart ache — it would be her.
When I reached the grove, Maori’s great tree shimmered with soft gold light.
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The roots shifted faintly as I stepped into the clearing, like they recognized me.
A soft breeze brushed my cheek, carrying her voice.
“You felt it too.”
I nodded, though she hadn’t fully appeared yet. “Yeah. Something brushed my mana. It wasn’t hostile… just strange.”
The air rippled, and her form took shape — faint and radiant, her long hair flowing like leaves in sunlight.
She looked at me with that patient smile that somehow always felt like she knew more than she said.
“The forest trembled when it reached you,” she said softly. “The other root draws near.”
“Other root?” I asked.
“You will see soon,” she murmured, her voice almost like a lullaby. “But remember, Rooga — not everything that feels familiar is safe.”
I frowned. “You sound like Mother.”
Maori smiled faintly. “Then perhaps she is learning.”
I sat beneath her branches, the wooden bird still in my hand.
The breeze carried faint murmurs from the direction of the village — voices, footsteps, the sound of new arrival.
That warmth pulsed again, just once.
Closer this time.
I didn’t know who or what it was yet.
But whatever was coming, it carried the same kind of loneliness I knew all too well.
I looked up at the glowing canopy and sighed.
“Guess peace doesn’t last long around here."
Maori chuckled quietly.
“Peace never stays where fate decides to grow.”
(Lunaria Aevielle’s POV)
The world beyond the carriage hummed with life.
Every breath, every sound, every heart carried a different rhythm.
To my escorts, it was just another human settlement — noisy, uneven, crude.
To me, it was chaos made of mana.
But within that chaos, something familiar called out.
Soft. Steady. Ancient.
A song I had not heard since the Age of Silence.
I stepped away from the elven carriage without a word.
The Sentinels and attendants called after me, but their voices blurred against the current of mana washing through the air.
The moment I crossed beyond their protection circle, I felt it — a pulse that was not human, not mortal.
It thrummed deep in the earth like the heartbeat of the world itself.
Warm. Patient. Kind.
For a moment, I stopped breathing.
“Impossible…” I whispered.
Because that presence — that divine melody resonating beneath the soil — belonged to the one the elves called Elandriel, the Root Mother.
Our goddess.
The spirit we thought devoured by the Corruption ages ago.
Our records said her song had vanished with the fall of the last great forest.
That only silence and decay remained where her roots once lay.
Yet here, in this human land… she breathed.
I followed that pulse instinctively.
Every step drew me closer to its source — the air growing thicker, sweeter, full of green life.
It pressed against my skin, soft but commanding, like a mother’s hand guiding her child.
The villagers I passed murmured behind me, their curiosity tugging faintly at my awareness.
“An elf child?”
“No, look—her eyes are covered…”
“A holy one.”
But I didn’t hear them for long.
Because beneath that divine pulse — faint but steady — another rhythm began to surface.
Different. Human.
Yet woven into the goddess’s mana as if born from it.
This one was smaller, gentler, but… alive in a way even divinity wasn’t.
It was him.
The heartbeat I had seen in my vision.
“Lady Lunaria!” one of my attendants shouted behind me. “You mustn’t wander—this place isn’t sanctified!”
I barely heard her.
The song was louder now — not in sound, but in feeling.
The goddess’s mana rolled through the ground beneath me like waves.
For the first time since I was chosen as Seer, I felt awe that shook my very core.
Tears welled beneath my blindfold, seeping into the silk.
“She’s here…” I breathed.
“The Mother still lives…”
I took another step, and the warmth changed.
From the divine calm of the goddess to something… human, soft, uncertain.
And that’s when I felt him fully — the other resonance, the melody that had haunted my dreams.
Just as I reached for it — just as the air trembled with connection — the ground ahead erupted.
A wall of earth rose in front of me, thick and immovable.
Its mana wasn’t divine but refined, disciplined.
Lyra’s voice carried over the rumbling earth, firm but respectful.
“Lady Seer, I said rest first.”
I stopped, lowering my head.
Her spell was precise, efficient, perfectly balanced — clearly influenced by another’s teaching.
Likely his.
The pulse of the goddess’s mana still surrounded me, wrapping around the wall like roots.
And behind it, I could still feel him — faint, curious, waiting.
“I respect your wish,” I said softly, pressing my hand to the warm stone. “But please… don’t keep me from her voice for long.”
Lyra’s mana shifted on the other side, cautious but not hostile.
As my attendants hurried to catch up, I turned my face toward the grove again.
The divinity there pulsed once more — patient, knowing.
And somewhere within that sacred heartbeat, the boy’s mana flickered in perfect rhythm with it.
The goddess and the mortal.
Two notes of the same song.
I smiled faintly beneath the blindfold.
“Now I understand,” I whispered.
“Why the Heartroot told me to walk here.”
Because the world’s lost goddess was not gone.
She was simply waiting beside her chosen caretaker.
And so was I.